Blog

December 06, 2018

It’s a bird! It’s a plane! It’s…an ad that I glanced at for two seconds before quickly mousing down the page so I could resume my online editorial. Even though online advertising is getting smarter (i.e. native advertising and skins to match the web environment), audiences are quick to thwart advertising efforts to get consumers to really see an ad.

Regulations Don’t Solve The Issue

Advertisers are complaining about the current IAB Viewability standard (noted as “2 continuous seconds” for video ads according to MRC). They are stating that it doesn’t go far enough to making the ads fully viewable as comparable to, say, a full-screen TV ad. Big players like IBM, HP, and Nestle are creating their own viewability standards including longer view requirements and other revamped metrics to increase the value of an impression. But would making ads more viewable result in greater attention from the viewers? The evidence to date has proven otherwise.

Viewers Have Spoken

While Home Page Takeovers, Speed Bumps, and Pre-Roll ads are seemingly the most viewable, viewers hate these formats the most. In a survey of over a thousand US internet users by Kantar Millward Brown, 71% of respondents said that ads are more intrusive now than they were three years ago. And according to our in-player video attention data, viewers on average watch only half the 30-second video ads with over 90% abandoning before completion even if the ads are fully viewable on-screen with a click-to-play, user-choice experience.

Maintaining Consumer Trust

High viewability standards may be a quick fix, but it is not sufficient for bridging the attention gap plaguing online video advertising. Bottom line: viewability has nothing to do with how well an ad worked. To avoid alienating audiences, marketers need to look beyond viewability metrics to instead focus on the complete holistic experience they are bringing to customers. It’s the only solution to respect and maintain consumer trust.

Learn more in our recent whitepaper to see marketers’ current approach to achieving consumer attention and how viewability may not be the cure-all for best business practices.